No books are allowed here this week. Tell me how you spend your free time when you’re not reading.
When I’m not reading or watching anime I’m usually playing games. This used to be my main hobby but for the last several years I kinda lost interest and are now just playing in bursts whenever something catches my fancy. I’m finishing up the last bits and bobs of Shadow of the Erdtree right now and I might start Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance next. Just like the non-remake version, I played it for about 30 minutes and then something else caught my eye. This time I want to pick it back up and not just forget it again, but my backlog is insane and it feels more like an obligation than something I actually want to do (which takes a lot out of the fun of the whole thing).
I also started to get into cooking for the past 5 years or so and are currently in my creative phase where I try to come up with new stuff instead of following recipes. It’s not good honestly…
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I sympathize with the not having time to game any longer. When I was in grad school, I spent tons of my free time gaming (way too much time in EVE Online). However, these days, the last time I played a game all the way through was early pandemic, playing through the FF7 Remake because I was stuck at home and told not to work.
These days, when I have free time, it tends to get sucked up by home improvement projects mainly. I bought a house not too long ago and, because I am not particularly wealthy and live in an expensive area of the US, it has required a lot of work to get it fixed up. At this point I have mostly fixed up the interior of the house and have shifted to exterior work. It hasn’t been fun in the recent heat we have had in my area. The nice thing about outdoor work is that I can’t do it at night. It lets me devote time to catch up on shows or, more recently, make improvements to the discussion bot in the anime community.
Regarding cooking, you will get better at it. I grew up cooking since my mom was professionally trained and worked in fancy restaurants before retiring to raise kids. That means I got a head start on cooking practice. However, when I moved out on my own, my cooking kinda sucked by comparison. It was only through practice, experimenting, reading and understanding more about the process/ingredients that I got better. I know you said no books this week, but if you’ll permit me…
One cooking thing that I found helped a lot with my success rate when modifying or creating a recipe was understanding why recipes typically do one thing or another. A book that was extremely helpful in that regard was “The Food Lab” by J Kenji Lopez-alt. There is nothing fancy in the book, but just some robust recipes for staple dishes and detailed explanations for why that is the recipe and process. As a scientist, it really connected with me and I learned a lot. I found that once I knew why things were done a certain way, I was much more successful with my cooking attempts and the improvisation that is sometimes required when something doesn’t go right.
I am an avid subscriber of Kenji on Youtube and have cooked a lot of his recipes over the last years. He is such a great cook and his recipes are always actually followable for someone of my skill level.
Home improvement is something I had to go trough in the beginning of the year as well. I had to move into my new apartment and that came with a lot of work and costs, but at least it gave me a excuse to upgrade my kitchen ;) But since it’s only temporary while my original apartment building gets rebuilt I didn’t spend too much time on replacing everything.
